A few weeks ago I visited West Chester Pennsylvania, and the Brandywine River Museum of Art. While there someone told my friends and I to visit Baldwin’s Book Barn. I’m glad I did. Five stories of well preserved, well-curated books of every kind, and in the stacks I found my new favorite illustrator, Warwick Hutton.

Hutton draws like he’s having fun and his compositions and layout design are so strong that his thin, squiggly lines never feel overdone, but always in the right place. I’ve never seen watercolors used so well to create the blinding effect of light. The left page below reminds me of the famous French cartoonist Moebius but with a charming vagueness. Click on the image to see it better.

Hutton draws like a human, not trying to render to perfection his subject matter. And he draws humans as humans, slight, frail, soft, sexual but not pornographically sexy, which is so often a mechanical fabrication of real humanity.

I suppose I could write a lot more, but I think it would detract from this whole thing, the pictures should be looked at, the book should be opened, the artist should be inspired. If you’d like to see Karen and I flip through this book and talk about it check out my Youtube channel HERE.

Thanks for reading! Do share this around if it has inspired you. Warwick Hutton died of cancer at the age of fifty five, too soon, and I’m sad to say to early forgotten, at least on the internet it seems. If you’ve been a fan of his for awhile let me know!